rescued by the 1930's and 2009

missed work today, for a couple of reasons, and i was feeling low...

and i was listening to the album nuclear war by sunra on spotify...

and the song "smile" came on, written as an instrumental for the 1936 charlie chaplin film, modern times, words written for nat king cole's version in the 50's,

it very much helped me, i've learned to play it on the piano and i may well do a version of it, in the same kind of way as stardust effected me back then and the plan i had for that tune, i don't know if i'll ever get to where i wanted to get to with that tune (it only got some of the way...) but this one would belong with it...

and then i watched moon, the 2009 film, which was really good... made me feel good...

so, thankyou, 1stly the 1930's, 2ndly the year 2009, and 3rdly, my day off, which is costing me money, but which i clearly needed...

spanner jazz punks rehearsal later...

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improvisation gay cabaret

old, old friend D came round yesterday for an improvisation which was one of the longer ones, 25 minutes rendering now...

as soon as we'd done i had to get on my bike and race down to the pigalle club in picadilly for a rehearsal for the gig i did later on last night...

my end of the whole thing was only set up 2 days before and the promoter was one of the more disorganised promoters i've come across... it was a kind of gay cabaret / new artists night, hosted by a beautiful drag queen called miss K, a monthly affair that i will probably be playing the piano for again, one of these occasions where you have to put up with a fairly unsatisfactory organiser, (having to wait until 2:30am to get paid) for the sake of working...

so yesterday:

get up for work, cycle into town,
work, cycle home, set up improvisation,
improvise (which was lovely), cycle into town,
rehearse (which was insane), cycle home,
eat shabbat meal with my beautiful dinah (which was lovely), cycle into town,
wait around a great deal, do the gig, wait around a great deal, get paid, cycle home,
crawl into bed with my beautiful dinah...

we have announced our impending exit from this house which was the big news mentioned on monday, we can now plan our move out loud instead of in secret...

i have quite a few groovy things planned next week, an improvisation with a great singer, a recording of drums for stardust & the arrival of my new computer... it's all going on...

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strings sunday

so, on friday T told me that the string session had to be tonight, sadly i'll be missing part of W(floopy)shaman's birthday bash for it but needs must...

so today, as well as doing my customary sunday thing with dinah, learning up another part of the handel piece that's hard, i'm putting together my string arrangement for anti-stardust...

i've been working on T's strings for a few sessions and i'm taking the opportunity of the session to record my own stuff as well, just this one tune...

it still could fall off the end of the session but i don't think it will...

so here i am, not a whole heap of sleep after a great night for me, dinah & Gordy @ dr K's... running MIDI strings through cubase, that will then convert into printed notes, that will then sit in front of real string players that will then become part of anti-stardust...

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stardust

it was written in the 1920's by hoagy carmichael, it was then covered by practically everyone who was anyone in 30's jazz... 40's jazz... 50's...

anyway, i saw frank sinatra sing it the other day and i was reminded of how much i love it...

that night me & dinah went round to W(floopy)shaman & T's for a shabbat meal that was lovely...

anyway over the course of the night we got drunk & stoned to the extent that once home i couldn't sleep, so i kept my notebook by the bed, so as not to disturb dinah too much in the night...

i lay there for awhile, trying to sleep, then i wrote for awhile, then i got up and went downstairs, eventually getting back into bed just before dinah had to get up @ 8...

i'd spent the entire night thinking about the song and how i wanted to do a version of it, i'd messaged yimkin on myspace about it, downloaded lyrics and a few different versions of the chords, developed the opening couple of minutes for the video...

around 6 i still wasn't ready to sleep so i video'd the sky and the crescent moon, and the sun which was up by then, all from the top of the house, while i watched chungking express...

yesterday i downloaded as many versions of it as i could... many bad, many cheesy, in fact frank's version from the 40's is still the closest to what i want, although a 21st century production...

glen miller does it well too...

my next step is to find a way of playing it, somehow akin to my arrangement of that song i did a few summers ago when i had the quintet that never gigged... what was that song?

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